Manifest is the Git client built for developers running two — or five — GitHub identities. Cross-repo Mission Control across every account. AI through a built-in MCP server. Free for unlimited identities, forever.
Free, unlimited, forevermacOS today · Windows next quarterLocal-first · zero repo data leaves your machine
~15 MB
native binary
∞
GitHub accounts
46 tools
via built-in MCP
$0
core, forever
Why Manifest exists
Every Git GUI was built for who you were in 2010.
One repo. One identity. One context. The mental model is fifteen years old. It's why every option in the category — even the polished, expensive ones — feels slightly wrong the moment you clone a repo under a second account.
Free · single-account
GitHub Desktop
The default. Works fine for one identity, hostile to two. No cross-repo dashboard, no AI, effectively stagnant.
$60+/yr · 400 MB+ RAM
GitKraken
Powerful but heavy. Multi-account is paywalled. AI features arrived late and remain bolted on.
$69/yr · frozen
Tower
Beautiful in 2018, unchanged since. No multi-account model, no MCP, no AI workflow worth the name.
Free · abandoned
Sourcetree
Free and slow. Multi-account is a registry workaround. Most engineering teams have already left.
Feature
Manifest
GitHub Desktop
GitKraken
Tower
Multi-account, first-class
unlimited
no
paid only
no
Cross-repo dashboard
Mission Control
no
limited
no
Built-in MCP server
native
no
no
no
RAM at idle
~80 MB
~150 MB
400 MB+
~120 MB
Price for full features
$0 / $8
$0
$9+/mo
$69/yr
Mission Control
Start with the work that needs you.
Open Manifest at 9am, read one screen, and decide what you're doing for the next thirty minutes. No tabs. No GitHub notifications inbox. No gh pr list in three terminals.
Reviews waiting on you, sorted by age and account
Your open PRs with CI, conflicts, and approval state
Repos with local changes, unpushed commits, or upstream drift
Multi-account
Every GitHub identity stays in its lane.
Each GitHub identity gets its own commit author, its own accent colour, and its own keyboard shortcut. Manifest writes the right author into the right repo's local .git/config. Your global config stays untouched.
Commit identity is scoped per repo, never globally
Account colour, shortcut, and token storage stay separate
Pre-push checks catch the wrong origin before you ship
Beyond push and pull
The whole GitHub workflow, without leaving the window.
Manifest is more than a Git client. Browse and fork repositories you don't own, open and merge pull requests with the merge method you actually want, and review code in a layout built for reading — all from the same desk you commit at.
01
Discover
Find repos. Find developers.
Repo discovery. Search GitHub by language, stars, recency. Drill into READMEs, file trees, language breakdowns, recent commits. Fork, star, or watch with a click.
Developer profiles. Look up any GitHub user — bio, public repos, followers, blog. Follow from inside the app. No tab-switching to github.com.
02
Pull requests
The full lifecycle, in one window.
Open new PRs and drafts. Read inline diffs across files. Merge with merge-commit, squash, or rebase — your call, every time. Review across every account in one cross-repo PR queue.
03
Always within reach
Tray icon, code-focus mode, deep links.
Manifest lives in your menu bar with quick actions for Mission Control, MCP status, and refresh. Code focus mode collapses the chrome for distraction-free review. Click a x-github-client:// link and Manifest takes over.
AI through MCP
Give your tools real repo context.
Manifest runs a local MCP bridge in the background so compatible tools can read repo status, branches, diffs, pull requests, and history through scoped permissions.
Bearer-token bridge bound to 127.0.0.1
46 tools across status, diff, branches, history, PRs, and repo search
Per-client permissions, token rotation, and an audit log of calls
claude · connected to manifest mcp
claudeWhat PRs am I waiting on across all my work?
Most active repo: manifest (Mission Control redesign)
Open thread: PR #143 CI red since 10:42
Pricing
Pay for what you use. Multi-account is always free.
Crippled free tiers kill word of mouth. So we don't do that. Every feature you need to ship code across multiple GitHub identities is on the free plan, and stays there.
Free
0/ forever
The full Git client. Multi-account, Mission Control, GitHub Discover, the full PR lifecycle — everything you need to ship without leaving the window.
Unlimited GitHub accounts
Cross-repo Mission Control across every identity
Full Git: status, diff, commit, branch, push, pull
The questions everyone evaluating a Git client asks first.
Yes — and specifically, the alternative for people who've outgrown GitHub Desktop because they have a second GitHub account. Manifest does everything GitHub Desktop does (visualised diffs, branch management, push/pull, PR viewing) and adds first-class multi-account support, cross-repo Mission Control, and a built-in MCP server for AI integration. If GitHub Desktop is fine for one identity, Manifest is the upgrade for two or more.
Manifest is roughly an order of magnitude lighter than GitKraken (~15 MB native shell vs 400 MB+ Electron app), free for the core feature set, and ships with native AI integration through MCP. GitKraken paywalls multi-account; Manifest treats it as the design centre. If you've been considering GitKraken for multi-account support, Manifest is built for that exact use case at a quarter of the price and a tenth of the memory.
Tower hasn't shipped a meaningful AI workflow and has no multi-account model — Manifest is the modern replacement. Fork and Sublime Merge are both fast, well-loved single-identity tools; Manifest extends that audience to people running two or more identities and adds the Mission Control / MCP layer neither has.
That is the entire product. Add unlimited GitHub identities — work, personal, contract, OSS — each with its own commit author, accent colour, and keyboard shortcut. Manifest writes the correct author into each repo's local .git/config, so you never push as the wrong person again. There is no SSH-config setup, no insteadOf rewriting, no ~/.ssh/config stanza per identity. Add the account, pick a folder, ship.
The Model Context Protocol is the emerging standard for connecting AI assistants to data sources. Manifest's built-in MCP bridge exposes 46 tools — status, diff, branches, PRs, history, repo and user search — to Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, Zed, and other MCP-compatible tools. One-click installer per client. The Bearer token is provisioned automatically the moment you sign in to Manifest Cloud, so you can ask Claude "what PRs am I waiting on?" on day one and get a real answer drawn from every repo across every account.
Download Manifest for macOS.
Install the DMG, drag Manifest into Applications, and the app will take care of signed updates when a new version is available.
